I had a 3.0 and 30 ACT in high school. I should note that my h.s. was a top 100 in nation but i only took 1 AP class, which I received a B and an A in the 2 semesters. I played sports and was Captain of a varsity team, to be honest sports were my main focus in high school. Now Im a 2nd year at a Community college and at the end of this year will carry a 3.82 GPA with 60 credits of rigorous 200 level classes( only 3 B’s, 2 of which came in 1st semester so big upward trend). Im a voting member on the SGA and a chair of 1 of the SGA committees, Founder and President of the Economics Club at my school, participant in the rising leaders program where you have to attend workshops and create a project that helps society, member of PTK but dont participate in meetings or anything, work 20 hrs. a week, volunteer every Saturday for 4.5 hours, play club on a semi-pro/amateur men’s soccer team. Im also planning on putting alot of hours into my essays and I am constantly thinking of new ideas for them. My recs should also be good if not great. These are all true statements; I wouldnt waste your time or mine. With all that being said Im looking at….
U of Chicago, Northwestern, Notre Dame, Vandy, Cornell, UPenn, Cal Berkeley, and USC. Do I have a decent chance at any of these? Any recommendations on schools or advise on how to make my application more competitive? I really appreciate any advice and your time as well. Its hard to show my appreciation over a keyboard but I really do. Thanks!

You have a good shot at all of the above; at Cal you’ve got way more than a decent shot. Are you fulfilling a transfer articulation agreement for them?

I think you’re absolutely on the right track, not sure if there’s anything I would add except keep everything up!

If you really want to blow the adcoms away, I’d suggest having one or two killer accomplishments and focus on getting those off the ground before you apply: stuff like writing a book, organizing a major event, etc.

Basically we tell students to think about what they can do to (a) explore their biggest interests deeply and (b) use what they know to help as many people as possible. Find the intersect of (a) and (b), and that’s what you should do with your free time (both in life in general and for looking good on applications). For some students this will mean volunteering to help a professor with getting an interesting article published, for others it may mean starting their own small business, but for each student it will be a bit different because we’re all different people with different talents and interests.

Wow surprisingly good news i thought my hs gpa would be detrimental. Ill also definetely look into cal but the 2 cali schools are really on the backend of my list. The other thing is that i took the act again in the fall and got 33. Which score should i send the hs or post graduate 1? Also I was wondering whats your background with advising transfer students? Thanks for all your help and this is the best transfer site online ive been looking for this for a while now. Your work is appreciated.

When transferring, your college GPA matters many times more than your high school one, and it’s always better to see an improving trend (higher college GPA than high school GPA) since that speaks to your real college potential and it’s usually harder to get a high GPA in college vs. high school.

Re: ACT scores, it depends on each school’s policy. Some colleges will ask you to send in all scores, other schools will only ask for your best ones. You’ll have to look up the policy at each school.

Re: my background, I transferred to Dartmouth, co-founded this site, wrote The Transfer Book, and co-founded TransferCounselors.com, where I’ve worked with students to transfer to all the schools listed there. We’ve been doing the transfer stuff since 2009.

Thanks for your kind words! After we went through the process, we just saw there wasn’t much out there for transfer students, and that’s why we’ve put together these sites. It’s always good to hear that what we’re putting out is helpful.

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